In the backwater village of Callowford, roustabout Errol Stone is enlisted by a church messenger arriving with urgent missives for the hermit priest in the hills. Eager for coin, Errol agrees to what he thinks will be an easy task, but soon finds himself hunted by deadly assassins. Forced to flee with the priest and a small band of travelers, Errol soon learns he's joined a quest that could change the fate of his kingdom.
Protected for millennia by the heirs of the first king, the kingdom's dynasty nears its end and the selection of the new king begins--but in secret and shadow. As danger mounts, Errol must leave behind the stains and griefs of the past, learn to fight, and discover who is hunting him and his companions and how far they will go to stop the reading of the stones.
My review:
I rarely read fantasy, but had liked this author's page on facebook several months back, and the more he talked about his book, the more intrigued I became with it. When I saw it come up in an email of a list of books to review, I immediately requested it and was happy to find I was one of the people who requested it in time.
The book is 428 pages, and I really had no intent to read it from cover to cover in one evening, but I did just that. It is a very enjoyable, interesting, and exciting read. This is the author's debut novel, but he truly has a gift with words and took me to all sorts of imaginary places that I could almost see because of his descriptive language.
He created a great main character in Errol, a young teen boy that starts out the book a good for nothing drunk, but becomes the hero of the story by the end and shows that anyone can truly change. The book is filled with other colorful characters and settings that kept me quite spellbound til I finished the book. There was a lot of casting of lots in the book, which I found interesting, and which the story revolves around. I'm not sure of the time period the book is set in, but its long before any kind of modern conveniences and technology.
I thoroughly enjoyed the book. It is a very entertaining read that was far better than I hoped it would be. It shows that even the lowliest and most hopeless of men can be used by God and become totally opposite of what their life used to be. The author can be rightly proud of this debut novel. If it was a hit in baseball, it would be a home run. Great book.
I'm giving the book 5 stars on Amazon, but do have one small complaint about the book: there were a lot of unfamiliar words and terms thrown around in the book, and a glossary would have been nice for some of the words that I never did figure the meaning of.
This is the first book in The Staff and Sword series. Book two, The Hero's Lot, is due out in July of this year.
About the author:
Patrick W. Carr teaches high school math and makes his home in Nashville, Tennessee, with his incredible wife, Mary, and their four awesome sons, Patrick, Connor, Daniel, and Ethan. Learn more at patrickwcarr.com.
Cast of Stones is available from Bethany House Publishers.
Thanks to Bethany House for the review copy.
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